


Joyeux Noel (or Three Times Gaius and Caprica Celebrated a Holiday That Is Not At All Christmas)

by NicoleAnell



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:36:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for sunshine_queen, pure holiday id fic.  Three holidays celebrated by Gaius and Caprica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joyeux Noel (or Three Times Gaius and Caprica Celebrated a Holiday That Is Not At All Christmas)

_Caprica_

He buys her beautiful things. Necklaces, bracelets, a ring once -- a lopsided geodesic thing that seemed very consciously chosen to  _never_  be mistaken for something it wasn't. She enjoys giving too, though she doesn't need an occasion for it. He'll arrive home to find someone's delivered him a new bookcase, or put together a fashionable wall in his study just for photographs of the important people he's met. (How accustomed he's becoming to her breaking into his home, rare but it does happen more than once. He needs to choose a better security code. He never gets around to that.)

For his birthdays, lingerie for her, something special and new. She sometimes has ideas of even more gifts, for all the years the mission might take. Two solstices pass while they're together, and there's also Aphrodite's Eve and the made-up anniversary they chose on some arbitrary day, when she lied to him -- to his relief -- that she didn't remember the real day either.

The first solstice, they have dinner together. He likes to impress her with his tastes and connections, and he likes that she is disaffected by it -- content but not fawning, almost smirking at a joke he doesn't understand. There are tasteful decorations throughout the restaurant, white and red bows, and a band playing soft, jazzy holiday music on the piano and bass. He's rented out the room for them.

_You ought to visit your father,_  she tests the words in her mind. Too presumptive, too nagging. He visits him enough. The second solstice, he will be gone.

"I have a surprise for you tonight," she says instead. "Gaius, how would you like someone to join us?" It's barely a real question. She knows he wants this so much it shames him.

He nearly chokes on his bread and seems bewildered when he catches her meaning. "I- I don't know what to say." She sees his eyes dart nervously, as if someone will catch them for public indecency, just talking about this. He comes forward slightly in his chair and lowers his voice to a level only she can hear. (How often he does this, and how much she loves it.) "A woman?" he says obviously, going through various alternatives in his mind. "Well, if you... that would..." he ends up just nodding helplessly. "Yes," he says in that quiet voice, abandoning the fear that this could be a trap. "Yes." It seems ironic to her suddenly, that he went through such lengths to spend the night alone with her, to convince her of his unlikely commitment to only her, at the same time she planned an equally selfless and improbable demonstration. She can't decide what that means, or why it matters.

He sips his wine, still looking at a loss for words. "If only she was a twin to you," he says finally, as if proud and relieved of his quick thinking, and it's sweet. "Is that rude?" he asks playfully. "Not that I can imagine the universe allowing two of you." He's being Gaius, affectedly charming, but there's a note of real reverence behind it that makes her weak. Perhaps for a split second he sees something dance in her eyes, some kind of calculation, but she shuts it off just as quickly and says, "No." This other women will not matter the way her sisters do. For an instant, she cannot even think of him being less hers in any way.

\----------------------

_New Caprica_

There's a large-scale protest outside Colonial One in the morning. The first scattered dissidents gather just minutes after daylight, the moment the curfew ends, and by the afternoon -- by the time Gaius is awake and Caprica rises from her desk -- it's become a _situation_. "It's the holiday," D'Anna says, "they think we won't fire on them."

The Fives disagree. "They want a massacre. They're inviting it." He believes he has insight into martyrdom. They haven't  _done_  anything yet, but there's concern that they mean to tear the tree down, all their lovely decorations in the public square. It's their own fault for believing it would be protected by goodwill alone. Everyone discussing it seems very sure that at least one of their options is laughable, but they don't agree which one -- they'd be stupid not to act, and stupid to be provoked into violence. Gaius is taking his pills while they talk about non-lethal weapons, sonic waves. Put out a warning and then make them move.

Or send some food and carolers out there, is Gaius's suggestion. Leave them be. This idea is ridiculous. It'll just become a fight, a riot. "It would be that anyway," he says irritably, looking for all the world like he just wants to go back to sleep.

"By all means," says the Five in a deadpan way, "would  _you_  like to go out there, Mr. President? I'm sure that would cheer them up."

There's a flash of fear behind Gaius's annoyance because he does not want to die, and does not like to be reminded that he is trapped in a very small office, or so unliked by the masses outside, even the ones not currently yelling. His misery enrages her sometimes, and that makes her feel terrible.

He understands humans in a way they may not, though. There's a decades-old story from Aerilon about a rebellion that happened two days before solstice, but on that day the fighting ended -- paused, at least. They take a vote and try it his way.

It's true that they don't eat the food, that most of them toss it on the ground or back toward the ship, and only a few -- the most miserable looking who seemed unsure why they were even there, maybe just passing through -- try discreetly to save it for later. But they do disperse eventually; the presence of singing children seems to quiet some of the shouting. Someone is probably taking notes of the leaders, the ones who stick around longer, but there need not be any arrests in such small numbers.  _The planet is so small,_  she finds herself thinking. It's all they have. Something about this chills her. It will get better. It can only get better. "Gaius," she says in a warning voice, "try not to be near the windows."

She can never tell these days what to do with him. Sometimes he shrinks away when she touches him, other times he grabs her hand like an anchor. He still giggles involuntarily when they start making love, but both happen less and less now, the sex and the laughing -- these things seem connected. Now though, he hovers next to her while the other Cylons file out to their various projects. (She wonders when he became her project, and then she realizes the answer is as long as she can remember.) She loops her arm around him and he leans into her, hesitating to say something.

"Did we give them  _all_  the food?" he asks finally, tired and knowing exactly how it sounds, but he probably can't help thinking of all that wasted pot pie and apple stuffing out there in the dirt. It makes her smile and then laugh, guileless and happy.

"No," she says. "I'm sure we didn't." She likes this word for them, we. 

"You don't have to go anywhere today," she tells him in her arms. It's a sort of present, and has nothing to do with the protest. "No speeches, no meetings. You can stay in bed all day if you want." Want is not a question. She knows he wants this so much that it shames him. On any other day he might be paranoid, maybe he is even now, but he only nods.

The truth is he's been holed up in Colonial One more and more each day, the security concerns of getting him anywhere beyond the checkpoints and razor wire are deemed a burden most of the time. The Cylons have strength in numbers, and the instinctive fear the humans still have of them -- only a small handful have been killed walking on their own, and all the culprits were severely troubled and thoughtless and mostly dead now. Gaius is vulnerable and ephemeral, and so unliked by the masses outside, and so loved by her.

"Thank you," he says in that dull, hoarse voice he always has lately. But he seems to hear the bitterness in it himself, and he tries again, more sincere: " _Thank_  you." This is a sort of present too (such lengths to prove his unlikely commitment to her). It's all they have to give to each other, so much and so little.

\----------------------

_Earth_

The humans soon realize the winter months here don't align with their old calendar, they're circling another sun. New Caprica was so cold most of the year they wouldn't have noticed, but this is different. It isn't anything new to the poorer Colonies, used to following Caprica's lead regardless of weather, but there have been jokes and complaints about their solstice being nowhere near darkness or snow. Until it's all sorted out, the Cylons have created their own variation of the winter festivities, called it Natalia. All Caprica-Six can feel at first is a relief that nobody is trying to make  _her_  a hero anymore.

The spirit catches on with her eventually. There's a sweetly vague, contradictory reverence to the holiday. It's about the joy of discovering a better path, of their alliance and their new home. It's about the grief and loss they endured, the memory of those who were sacrificed and never will be reborn. It's also about young gazelles and rabbits, seemingly for no reason. As far as she can tell, it's because they're everywhere and they're docile, and mostly will react with confused stares and passive non-resistance when the Twos run around hanging wreaths around their necks.

The tradtions grow and strengthen as their children do. Julia is theirs and Joseph an orphan who found his way to them, and she loves them both with equal intensity. (Julia's love in return is more unconditional. Joseph always seemed afraid of her when he was small. Every bit as fiercely as he attached himself to Gaius, he would watch her in mute fascination and uncertainty. She remembers vividly the first night he climbed into their mosquito netting and tugged her arm instead of his. Julia was an infant lying beside her. He was "scareder of lions" now, he told her, a hundred times more than he'd been of Cylons those other nights. Maybe he'd calculated who was more able to win in a fight, adopted one nightmare as an ally against the other one. "Watch your sister," she whispered to him, finding a place for him by her hip, and she stroked his hair with the hand that wasn't resting on tiny Julia's chest. Gaius stirred behind her and kissed her cheek, pressed his head briefly against her shoulder, his unlikely commitment to her. Her heart was too full to sleep that night.)

They are almost two and six years old now. Julia talks continuously now, and some of what she says has started making sense. She likes to sing in a babbling way and calls her mother "Umma." Gaius takes cloth dolls and dull, blunt swords they can play with and wraps them in blankets under the bed, but they play their roles and talk about the angels who are coming to leave presents for them, of Hermes and D'Anna and Kara Thrace. "Only if we're good," Joseph parrots from some other child, gnawing on his lip. "If we're bad we get bad things." She sees something break a little in Gaius's face. It seems like a lie more than the other lies, and much too much responsibility for them.

He bends to their level and brushes a hair away from Joseph's brown eyes. "You'll get bad things and good things whatever you do," he tells them calmly. "You are as perfect as you can be." Joseph nods as if he's trying to understand, and Julia stops sucking on her index finger and puts her hands on her father's face, covering his eyes with her palms, because this makes her laugh and laugh when they're at the same height.

She's acquired some pens and bleached paper for him, books and books of it, stashed away in a pile of laundry until morning. She never stops having gift ideas, for all the years this might last.

Before the sun sets, there's a Natalia candle service and a puppet show about gazelles and rabbits and joyful remembrance. She gets the sense some of her husband's former acolytes were involved in this somehow. Paulla is there, the Tighs, a very bemused Romo, dozens of others. Even some of the local tribe watch from a distance.

"Yay!" Julia shouts after the first three songs. After the nineteeth she says, "Umma goodnight," and slumps decisively into her mother's lap, willing herself to take a nap. It's that kind of service. She's going to be so completely Gaius's daughter, Caprica thinks sometimes, and can't decide what that means. Joseph is tracing pictures of houses in the grass and waiting nobly for his presents. And Gaius is crying. It's only a few moments that he quivers and composes himself, but she sees him do this twice during the show, set off by some inexplicable revelation, and she wordlessly slides her hand into his, and she knows.

After the sun sets, they lie under blankets together on the children's bed, not because any of them are scared anymore, only in anticipation of the morning. They pray for God's blessings and for the angels to have a safe gift-giving journey around the planet in their spaceships, and the children nestle between them. "That's not true about the spaceships," Joseph says suddenly. "How do you get faster than light?" It's going to be so hard to sort out the truth one day, she realizes.  _You were on one, do you remember?_  she wants to say while Gaius is reassuring him. He was born on New Caprica and he used to be afraid of her when he was small, until he heard about lions.

That night she lies awake listening to their breath and their heartbeats, all three of them, the way she would monitor Julia's pulse when she was born, marvelling at how alive she was. She sleeps and dreams of staying there forever, razor wire where their thin mosquito netting is. She understands that painful want now, and the pain helps her understand happiness. In the morning Julia bounces impatiently next to her, saying "Umma, the angels were here," or something close to that. It seems like a lie less than the others.


End file.
